Shining Hero (25 page)

‘It is that wicked boy Karna who has done all this,’ Sadas and Pashi
said as Raki gazed in horror at the shattered possessions, the blood-splashed walls and the wounds on the goondas. ‘He has hurt us badly as you can see.’

‘But why?’ cried Raki.

‘Look, look,’ cried Sadas, pointing to where the women’s clothes had been. ‘He was stealing the gold jewels and when we tried to stop him he attacked us.’

‘These boys from the streets are always the same. They are evil and treacherous and not to be trusted,’ said Pashi.

‘But he has been with me for more than three years. He has been like a son to me. He has never cheated me in the very smallest way.’ Raki felt his eyes heat up with hurting tears.

‘And he has been in the widow’s godown. We saw him there. He has probably stolen all your stuff from there as well.’

‘You should chase him now and put an end to him for he will be sure to betray us and then all of us will be done for,’ said Sadas.

‘You are right,’ said Raki sadly. In all his life he had never met an honest person till Karna came to him. ‘The boy seemed like my son but I know now what I must do.’

His chest was burning with the pain of disillusionment as he loaded his pistol. ‘I am sorry that my boy did this to you,’ he said as he went out.

Karna, who had always been so careful, who had traded in the darkest corners, who talked only in whispers when he was selling, who had slunk in daytime like a nocturnal animal, now ran in daylight in full view of all. Sometimes he would sink to the ground and crouch shuddering and sometimes he would scramble up and run again as though he was a dog with rabies. No one paid attention to the bloodstained child, who could have been a male or female. Such things were not unusual in Calcutta. But the police noticed him. They had been trying to track down Karna for two weeks and till this day he had always eluded them, letting them almost catch up with him, then suddenly vanishing, mocking them and shouting jibes.

‘I’m sure it’s the child dealer,’ the constable said. ‘This fellow may be wearing women’s clothes but even with his face all beaten up, I think it is the same. I recognise that tray of ballpoint pens.’

‘He is clearly an even more depraved child than we first thought,’ said the second policeman. ‘You can see from the state of him that he has been involved with some kind of filthy sex.’

Karna put up no resistance when they caught him. He was so numb with self-disgust and horror that he hardly minded it. They pulled him out of sight into a doorway, ripped the cardboard tray in bits and found the plastic packets in a moment. Then they set to work upon his body.

‘You had better not do any more of that to him,’ said one constable to the other after half an hour. ‘We need him alive to give us the names of his associates.’ But the other constable did not listen. He needed all the revenge he could take for the way this chit of a child had teased and outwitted him for so long.

The prostitute, Laika, who had managed eventually to get enough money together to pay for a skin graft that had made her sufficiently acceptable to achieve her ambition, was with a customer when she heard the screaming. And through the sound of the customer’s grunts and groans Laika recognised the voice of Karna. Shoving the man away, she scrambled off the charpoy, and rushed out into the street, her hair wild and still pulling her sari back on. When she saw the policemen on top of Karna she began yelling, ‘Stop that at once. Don’t do it to him. Don’t, don’t, don’t.’ Her customer appeared, clutching his pyjama over his large erection and began shouting furiously, ‘Come back at once, you bitch, and give me what I paid you for.’

The two constables were so engrossed in what they were doing that, at first, they were unaware of either the prostitute or her outraged client. After a while, though, one turned, saw Laika and, as if she was an annoying fly, gave her a swipe that sent her flying. With blood running from her nose where she had hit the
ground, she began to run to the kigalis, her client coming after her, yelling abuse.

‘They have got Karna. Come quickly, before they kill him,’ Laika screamed.

The kigalis went racing to the alleyway that the girl had pointed out to them. The two constables were bending over something inert. One constable straightened and taking his gun from its holster, casually shot into the mob of oncoming boys. One gave a shriek and fell. The rest stopped abruptly.

Raki had heard Laika’s shouts, seen the kigalis running and when he heard the gunshot, guessed what it might be. ‘There, go there,’ he told his rickshaw wallah, and moments later he was out of the rickshaw and at the other end of the alleyway. At first he thought, with dread, that it was too late, for the police already had Karna. But then he became a little hopeful that the presence of the kigalis might confuse the issue and that if he acted swiftly he would get a chance of doing what was needed.

The police still had their attention on the kigali mob. Raki saw Karna struggle to sit up. He had his kukri in his hand and, as Raki watched, Karna raised it to hack at the leg of Constable Two.

‘That’s my boy,’ thought Raki, tears of love running down his face. ‘My brave brave boy who never gives in. It is a shame that this courageous spirit should be extinguished, but all the same it must be done.’ And he carefully aimed his pistol at Karna’s heart, but at the very moment before pulling the trigger, Karna’s kukri came down on the calf of Constable Two. The policeman staggered, began to fall, and met the bullet meant for Karna. Karna spun round, to see where the shot had come from, saw Raki standing there, and over the child’s battered swollen face spread a smile of love because Raki, his goonda father, had come to save him.

Raki, sobbing, raised his gun again and carefully aimed it at Karna’s heart. But Constable Two was quicker. He raised his gun, pulled the trigger, and Raki’s chest exploded.

In the long moment of shock and silence that followed, Karna stood staring at the fallen body of the beloved goonda who had been about to kill him.

‘At a distance,’ Krishna answered,
‘fiery Arjun fought his way,
Now he seeks the archer, Karna
and he vows his death today.’

‘What do you think, Parvathi?’ Shivarani asked the maid. ‘Why will these women of India not listen to me?’

‘Because you have no brothers or husband, Mem, you don’t know the truth about women,’ said Parvathi. ‘They prefer male children as much as the men. It’s the women who have let the men get the better of everything.’ And Shivarani knew she was right, for you cannot subdue a whole sex, half a nation, without its compliance. She had written articles in any paper that would publish her, she had spoken on radio and had addressed big crowds in cities but there was always something more important than rights for women. Floods had drowned one bit of the country and drought was starving another part. The prime minister’s son had taken bribes. Leading companies were smuggling money out. Leading crooks were smuggling goods in. Outrages from Shivarani’s old party, the Naxalites – beheadings, tortures, bombings, stabbings. Scams and scandals are the stuff that news is made of, not the fact that a lot of Indian women seemed to be missing.

As Basu drove, she thought to herself, it is myths told by mothers, ayahs, grandmothers and aunts that have distorted thinking in our country, that have offered the prospect of unearned immortality and proposed uses and misuses of women as though they were the
property of men. Even goddesses, she thought, are traded as though they were cows in the tales in the Vedas.

‘What do you think when you hear such tales, Basu?’ she asked her driver. ‘Isn’t it wrong that Parvathi, a goddess, should be a chattel to be traded?’

‘Yes, Madam,’ said Basu and added, ‘I want to marry Parvathi.’

Shivarani was taken aback for a moment but then said, ‘I know you will be a good husband to her.’

The car did a little swerve as though Basu was nervous then he said, ‘My family will want to know how much dowry you will give her.’

‘I am against the giving of dowry. It is one of the things I am trying to stop,’ said Shivarani. ‘I will do all kind of other things but I can’t do that.’

The car moved along erratically for a few moments. Basu said, ‘I beg you, Memsahib. I love her but my family will not let me marry her otherwise.’

‘Come now, Basu. If you love her then go ahead. How can your family stop you?’

‘They can’t,’ admitted Basu, ‘but it will be so much trouble. For her as well as me if she has no dowry.’

A picture came into Shivarani’s mind of brides doused in paraffin and set alight by their parents-in-law because the dowry had not been forthcoming, or insufficient. But she had pledged to stamp out the dowry system. She shivered. ‘I can’t do it, Basu, I am sorry,’ she said.

Basu did not speak again for the rest of the two-hour journey.

That evening she met Bhima in Calcutta.

‘You look sad,’ he said. ‘Is there something wrong?’

‘It is difficult to combine my beliefs with my actions,’ she told him. ‘I long to give Parvathi a dowry, but how can I do it?’

‘Oh, blow ethics, Shiv,’ cried Bhima joyfully. ‘I would always put people before morality.’

Shivarani sighed. ‘I know you would,’ she said, ‘because you are braver and more foolish than me.’

‘I like that, Shiv. I am a brave fool. I know I am, though one of these days I might surprise you by doing something clever.’

Shivarani did not ask what, but she felt something tremble in her heart at his words. She asked, ‘What do you think I should do to get people to pay attention to my cause? Where have I gone wrong? Why won’t the women of India listen to me? Why won’t the men understand what they are doing?’ She felt tired. She wondered if she could go on anymore. She looked at Bhima and his dear face was a beloved landscape in which she felt safe. Happiness began to bloom in her heart like a lotus opening as she looked into his dark eyes that always shone with laughter, his thick hair, the rich chocolate colour of his skin that looked almost black in the gloom. And the dream re-awoke ferociously in her heart. What did she care about all those other women when here, before her, was her very own chance of happiness. She would give it all up, she thought, for Bhima’s sake. She would stop being a politician and become a wife, a lover. A mother. No more walking round the country, no more addressing crowds of gawping people who heard but did not care or understand. But marriage to a beloved person. She imagined herself permitted, at last, to caress that dark and darling body and her longing grew so huge for a moment, that she actually put out her hand to touch Bhima’s and then withdrew it again. She could not make that move, it was up to him. She wanted to say to him, it doesn’t matter about the job. Just being with you is all I want, all I’ve ever wanted, and I don’t mind being poor if I am with you. I don’t mind having nothing at all as long as I can share my life with yours. Even though lately the fame of her women’s movement had begun to spread, funds to come in and the media was, for the first time, paying attention to crimes against women, she was ready to abandon it all. Shivarani had set up a Calcutta office with accountants to handle the money and several clerks to manage the details. She would give all that up for Bhima.

They were in the South Indian coffee shop. On the floor was a squashed cockroach, the walls glistened darkly with twenty years of
oily fingering. The sole window, small and barred, was so thick with grime and webs that the light that filtered in was, though outside the midday sun was blazing, the same brown colour as the splendid South Indian decoction of coffee. This is where they always met when Shivarani was in Calcutta because Bhima could afford it and refused to go anywhere where he could not pay. He had refused to stay with Malti’s family or even eat with them so often and so emphatically, that they had given up inviting him.

‘What do you think, Bhima?’ she asked again. He had not been listening the first time she spoke, but had his finger on his lips and looked at her with his eyes laughing, his other finger pointing at a large rat that was plodding its way through the café, making for the image of the Lord Ganesh seated on his vehicle mouse.

‘Oh really, Bhima,’ laughed Shivarani. ‘In any other country a rat is considered the carrier of disease and here we are, coddling the creature with garlands and little feasts.’

‘Isn’t that lovely. Isn’t that wonderful,’ cried Bhima. ‘Isn’t that the most wonderful thing about our glorious country.’ By now the rat had reached the god, and was settling down to eat the daintily set out food, a little slice of fresh coconut, a small dish of dahi and a steamed lentil cake called vadai.

‘We treat rats better than we treat women,’ said Shivarani trying to sound disapproving, but succeeding only in laughing. She could not be serious when she was with Bhima.

‘To answer your question,’ he said. ‘What you need is a spectacle. You must do something even more dramatic than bribing the Prime Minister.’

Because Arjuna was at school and Gadhari was losing patience with Parvathi, Shivarani took her back to Calcutta with her, when she stayed in Malti’s house. The maid had become glum and withdrawn after Shivarani refused to give her a dowry and Shivarani, who had at first been relieved at Parvathi’s silence, began to feel guilty and wish
that the chattering feckless Parvathi would return. So she felt almost relieved when Parvathi burst suddenly into the drawing room and announced that a rickshaw was standing at the front doors, in which sat a Calcutta prostitute and a beaten-up boy.

Though Shivarani said sternly, ‘I keep telling you, you must not come into the room like this. You have to knock first. And there is no need to come troubling me with such matters. Tell the servants to get rid of them,’ she was unable to suppress a smile.

Parvathi, looking almost like her old self, went on enthusiastically, ‘But even though the boy is all over blood and bruises I think he is that dirty urchin who says you are his aunty. The kitchen servants have even threatened to give beatings but they won’t go away and the prostitute keeps shouting that because this boy is the son of Koonty Mem and because you are Koonty Mem’s sister, you must take him in.’ Parvathi was breathless with excitement. Her eyes sparkled with suspicion.

‘That’s enough, Parvathi,’ said Shivarani, swiftly getting up. ‘I will talk to them.’

‘And the prostitute is saying that Koonty Ma is a bad mother because she sent her servants to chase her son away. But why does she say that, Ma? Everybody is asking this question in the kitchens.’

‘Enough, Parvathi,’ roared Shivarani, hurrying to the door.

‘But these are dirty people and you must never believe anything they say,’ urged Parvathi as she followed Shivarani to the front doors.

Shivarani gasped with shock and horror at the sight of the beaten child in the rickshaw. ‘They have hurt his mouth a lot, Ma,’ Laika told Shivarani. ‘So he is having difficulty in talking. But his goonda is dead and he has come to give you his piece of gold because, although you are so rich already, you want it so much.’ A flicker of scorn crossed Laika’s scarred face.

Karna pulled out his gold medallion and reluctantly offered it.

‘That is not why I have been looking for you,’ Shivarani told Karna seriously. ‘I don’t want to take that. It is yours and for you to keep.’

Karna stared for a moment, his mouth open, then at top speed, tucked it back inside his shirt again, all the time keeping his surprised gaze on Shivarani. Laika said, ‘But you must get him education in exchange because that is what his mother, Dolly, wanted and he has no one else in all the world, now, to give him these things except for you.’ At Laika’s side Karna painfully nodded his agreement. ‘This is a very good boy,’ the prostitute went on. ‘Even though the people of your house are rich and eat ghee with their rice each day and wear slippers of leather, there is no one in your house who is as kind and brave and good as this poor little boy. He is always helping people when they need it and you are lucky that such a boy wishes to come to live with you. And also, Ma, it is necessary that you take him, because as you see he has been beaten badly and for the moment till his wounds have healed up, he will have no way of living unless you feed him. And he is surely a member of your own family and not the proper child of Dolly because the dhobi woman was of a very black complexion and this Karna, as you see, has a skin that is as fair as your own.’ When the prostitute had finished speaking she sat, waiting breathless for Shivarani’s response.

But Shivarani’s doubts were returning. How could this stunted ugly creature be the brother of the healthy handsome little Arjuna, and son of her pretty sister? As though reading her doubt Karna said, his voice muffled with pain and swelling, ‘I swear, Ma, that everything Laika tells you is the truth.’

‘Shall I call the policeman and ask him to come and give the pair of them another whacking for going around with such wicked lies?’ suggested Parvathi.

‘What do you think?’ said Shivarani on the phone to Bhima. ‘He does have golden eyes, and Koonty said that the eyes of the Sun God were golden. He has Koonty’s medallion too.’

‘Even though he is probably a fraud, from what you say he is badly hurt and needs medical treatment. And perhaps at the same
time you can find some way, in Calcutta, of establishing his identity,’ suggested Bhima.

‘It will be a relief to know, one way or the other,’ agreed Shivarani.

In the days that followed Karna felt inside him a hurt that might never heal because he had looked into the face of the person he loved, and understood that that person was about to kill him. It would have been better, Karna thought, if Raki’s bullet had got him instead of the policeman for what had he got to live for now? Everything in his world was gone, and even its memories had turned bitter now, for those three years with Raki, his goonda father, had been wiped out in that single moment when the goonda raised his gun and pointed it at Karna’s breast. Karna sometimes dared not shut his eyes, because when he did he saw the goonda wearing the baseball cap that Karna had given him and aiming his gun at Karna’s heart. Karna did not want ever to think of Raki again and yet kept thinking of him all the time.

The crippled goondas, though, had damaged Karna in another and perhaps even more dreadful way. Their actions had altered his perception of himself and made him feel filthy, and unworthy of his mother. He wanted to tell Dolly, ‘Before they did those dirty things to me I would have killed them both if I had had a gun.’ He wanted her to come and cleanse him and because that could not happen his self-disgust went on scalding him and there was nothing that would ease it.

The general opinion of the Calcutta medical experts who examined Karna was that, though small and thin, he was probably about eleven years old. By the end of a month, during which Karna’s face plumped out and health returned to his skin, there came moments when Shivarani thought the boy looked a little like Arjuna. Then Shivarani was told of a new test that was being used by some of the embassies on the children
of prospective emigrants in which the DNA proved their identity.

When the results arrived and Shivarani knew for sure that Karna was indeed her dead sister’s son, instead of feeling joy she was disappointed. While searching for Koonty’s lost child she had imagined the little girl putting her arms round Shivarani’s neck, gently kissing her, saying how happy she was to be back with her family again. But it was unthinkable that Karna should do or say such things. He was tough. He was too old for his years. He was not really a little boy at all, but a small and cunning adult.